Transcribed from the 1891 Chatto & Windus edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
CITATION AND EXAMINATION
OF
William Shakspeare
EUSEBY TREEN JOSEPH CARNABY AND
SILAS GOUGH CLERK
BEFORE THE WORSHIPFUL
SIR THOMAS LUCY KNIGHT
TOUCHING DEER-STEELING
_On the Nineteenth Day of September in the Year of Grace 1582_
NOW FIRST PUBLISHED FROM ORIGINAL PAPERS
TO WHICH IS ADDED
A Conference of Master Edmund Spenser
A GENTLEMAN OF NOTE
WITH
THE EARL OF ESSEX
TOUCHING THE STATE OF IRELAND A.D. 1595
BY
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1891
EDITOR’S PREFACE.
“IT was an ancestor of my husband who _brought out_ the famous
Shakspeare.”
These words were really spoken, and were repeated in conversation as most
ridiculous. Certainly such was very far from the lady’s intention; and
who knows to what extent they are true?
The frolic of Shakspeare in deer-stealing was the cause of his _Hegira_;
and his connection with players in London was the cause of his writing
plays. Had he remained in his native town, his ambition had never been
excited by the applause of the intellectual, the popular, and the
powerful, which, after all, was hardly sufficient to excite it. He wrote
from the same motive as he acted,—to earn his daily bread. He felt his
own powers; but he cared little for making them felt by others more than
served his wants.
The malignant may doubt, or pretend to doubt, the authenticity of the
_Examination_ here published. Let us, who are not malignant, be cautious
of adding anything to the noisome mass of incredulity that surrounds us;
let us avoid the crying sin of our age, in which the “Memoirs of a Parish
Clerk,” edited as they were by a pious and learned dignitary of the
Established Church, are questioned in regard to their genuineness; and
even the privileges of Parliament are inadequate to cover from the
foulest imputation—the imputation of having exercised his inventive
faculties—the elegant and accomplished editor of Eugene Aram’s
apprehension, trial, and defence.
Indeed, there is little of real history, excepting in romances. Some of
these are strictly true to nature; while histories in general give a
distorted view of her, and rarely a faithful record either of momentous
or of common events.
Examinations taken from the mouth are surely the most trustworthy.
Whoever doubts it may be convinced by Ephraim Barnett.
The Editor is confident he can give no offence to any person who may
happen to bear the name of Lucy. The family of Sir Thomas became extinct
nearly half a century ago, and the estates descended to the Rev. Mr. John
Hammond, of Jesus College, in Oxford, a respectable Welsh curate, between
whom and him there existed at his birth eighteen prior claimants. He
took the name of Lucy.
The reader will form to himself, from this “Examination of Shakspeare,”
more favourable opinion of Sir Thomas than is left upon his mind by the
dramatist in the character of Justice Shallow. The knight, indeed, is
here exhibited in all his pride of birth and station, in all his pride of
theologian and poet; he is led by the nose, while he believes that nobody
can move him, and shows some other weaknesses, which the least attentive
observer will discover; but he is not without a little kindness at the
bottom of the heart,—a heart too contracted to hold much, or to let what
it holds ebulliate very freely. But, upon the whole, we neither can
utterly hate nor utterly despise him. Ungainly as he is.—
Circum præcordia ludit.
The author of the “Imaginary Conversations” seems, in his “Boccacio and
Petrarca,” to have taken his idea of _Sir Magnus_ from this manuscript.
He, however, has adapted that character to the times; and in _Sir Magnus_
the coward rises to the courageous, the unskilful in arms becomes the
skilful, and war is to him a teacher of humanity. With much
superstition, theology never molests him; scholarship and poetry are no
affairs of his. He doubts of himself and others, and is as suspicious in
his ignorance as Sir Thomas is confident.
With these wide diversities, there are family features, such as are
likely to display themselves in different times and circumstances, and
some so generically prevalent as never to lie quite dormant in the breed.
In both of them there is parsimony, there is arrogance, there is contempt
of inferiors, there is abject awe of power, there is irresolution, there
is imbecility. But Sir Magnus has no knowledge, and no respect for it.
Sir Thomas would almost go thirty miles, even to Oxford, to see a fine
specimen of it, although, like most of those who call themselves the
godly, he entertains the most undoubting belief that he is competent to
correct the errors of the wisest and most practised theologian.
EDITOR’S APOLOGY.
A PART only of the many deficiencies which the reader will discover in
this book is attributable to the Editor. These, however, it is his duty
to account for, and he will do it as briefly as he can.
The _fac-similes_ (as printers’ boys call them, meaning _specimens_) of
the handwriting of nearly all the persons introduced, might perhaps have
been procured had sufficient time been allowed for another journey into
Warwickshire. That of Shakspeare is known already in the signature to
his will, but deformed by sickness; that of Sir Thomas Lucy is extant at
the bottom of a commitment of a female vagrant, for having a sucking
child in her arms on the public road; that of Silas Gough is affixed to
the register of births and marriages, during several years, in the
parishes of Hampton Lucy and Charlecote, and certifies one death,—Euseby
Treen’s; surmised, at least, to be his by the letters “E. T.” cut on a
bench seven inches thick, under an old pollard-oak outside the park
paling of Charlecote, toward the northeast. For this discovery the
Editor is indebted to a most respectable, intelligent farmer in the
adjoining parish of Wasperton, in which parish Treen’s elder brother lies
buried. The worthy farmer is unwilling to accept the large portion of
fame justly due to him for the services he has thus rendered to
literature in elucidating the history of Shakspeare and his times. In
possession of another agricultural gentleman there was recently a very
curious piece of iron, believed by many celebrated antiquaries to have
constituted a part of a knight’s breast-plate. It was purchased for two
hundred pounds by the trustees of the British Museum, among whom, the
reader will be grieved to hear, it produced dissension and coldness;
several of them being of opinion that it was merely a gorget, while
others were inclined to the belief that it was the forepart of a
horse-shoe. The Committee of Taste and the Heads of the Archæological
Society were consulted. These learned, dispassionate, and benevolent men
had the satisfaction of conciliating the parties at variance,—each having
yielded somewhat and every member signing, and affixing his seal to the
signature, that, if indeed it be the forepart of a horse-shoe, it was
probably Ismael’s,—there being a curved indentation along it, resembling
the first letter of his name, and there being no certainty or record that
he died in France, or was left in that country by Sir Magnus.
The Editor is unable to render adequate thanks to the Rev. Stephen
Turnover for the gratification he received in his curious library by a
sight of Joseph Carnaby’s name at full length, in red ink, coming from a
trumpet in the mouth of an angel. This invaluable document is upon an
engraving in a frontispiece to the New Testament. But since unhappily he
could procure no signature of Hannah Hathaway, nor of her mother, and
only a questionable one of Mr. John Shakspeare, the poet’s father,—there
being two, in two very different hands,—both he and the publisher were of
opinion that the graphical part of the volume would be justly censured as
extremely incomplete, and that what we could give would only raise
inextinguishable regret for that which we could not. On this reflection
all have been omitted.
The Editor is unwilling to affix any mark of disapprobation on the very
clever engraver who undertook the sorrel mare; but as in the memorable
words of that ingenious gentleman from Ireland whose polished and
elaborate epigrams raised him justly to the rank of prime minister,—
“White was not _so very_ white,”—
in like manner it appeared to nearly all the artists he consulted that
the sorrel mare was not _so sorrel_ in print.
There is another and a graver reason why the Editor was induced to reject
the contribution of his friend the engraver; and this is, a neglect of
the late improvements in his art, he having, unadvisedly or
thoughtlessly, drawn in the old-fashioned manner lines at the two sides
and at the top and bottom of his print, confining it to such limits as
paintings are confined in by their frames. Our spirited engravers, it is
well-known, disdain this thraldom, and not only give unbounded space to
their scenery, but also melt their figures in the air,—so advantageously,
that, for the most part, they approach the condition of cherubs. This is
the true aërial perspective, so little understood heretofore. Trees,
castles, rivers, volcanoes, oceans, float together in absolute vacancy;
the solid earth is represented, what we know it actually is, buoyant as a
bubble, so that no wonder if every horse is endued with all the
privileges of Pegasus, save and except our sorrel. Malicious carpers,
insensible or invidious of England’s glory, deny her in this beautiful
practice the merit of invention, assigning it to the Chinese in their
tea-cups and saucers; but if not absolutely new and ours, it must be
acknowledged that we have greatly improved and extended the invention.
Such are the reasons why the little volume here laid before the public is
defective in those decorations which the exalted state of literature
demands. Something of compensation is supplied by a Memorandum of
Ephraim Barnett, written upon the inner cover, and printed below.
The Editor, it will be perceived, is but little practised in the ways of
literature; much less is he gifted with that prophetic spirit which can
anticipate the judgment of the public. It may be that he is too idle or
too apathetic to think anxiously or much about the matter; and yet he has
been amused, in his earlier days, at watching the first appearance of
such few books as he believed to be the production of some powerful
intellect. He has seen people slowly rise up to them, like carp in a
pond when food is thrown into it; some of which carp snatch suddenly at a
morsel, and swallow it; others touch it gently with their barb, pass
deliberately by, and leave it; others wriggle and rub against it more
disdainfully; others, in sober truth, know not what to make of it, swim
round and round it, eye it on the sunny side, eye it on the shady,
approach it, question it, shoulder it, flap it with the tail, turn it
over, look askance at it, take a pea-shell or a worm instead of it, and
plunge again their heads into the comfortable mud. After some seasons
the same food will suit their stomachs better.
EXAMINATION,
ETC., ETC.
ABOUT one hour before noontide the youth WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE, accused of
deer-stealing, and apprehended for that offence, was brought into the
great hall at Charlecote, where, having made his obeisance, it was most
graciously permitted him to stand.
The worshipful Sir Thomas Lucy, Knight, seeing him right opposite, on the
farther side of the long table, and fearing no disadvantage, did frown
upon him with great dignity; then, deigning ne’er a word to the culprit,
turned he his face toward his chaplain, Sir Silas Gough, who stood beside
him, and said unto him most courteously, and unlike unto one who in his
own right commandeth,—
“Stand out of the way! What are those two varlets bringing into the
room?”
“The table, sir,” replied Master Silas, “upon the which the consumption
of the venison was perpetrated.”
The youth, William Shakspeare, did thereupon pray and beseech his
lordship most fervently, in this guise:—
“Oh, sir! do not let him turn the tables against me, who am only a simple
stripling, and he an old codger.”
But Master Silas did bite his nether lip, and did cry aloud,—
“Look upon those deadly spots!”
And his worship did look thereupon most staidly, and did say in the ear
of Master Silas, but in such wise that it reached even unto mine,
“Good honest chandlery, methinks!”
“God grant it may turn out so!” ejaculated Master Silas.
The youth, hearing these words, said unto him,—
“I fear, Master Silas, gentry like you often pray God to grant what _he_
would rather not; and now and then what _you_ would rather not.”
Sir Silas was wroth at this rudeness of speech about God in the face of a
preacher, and said, reprovingly,—
“Out upon thy foul mouth, knave! upon which lie slaughter and venison.”
Whereupon did William Shakspeare sit mute awhile, and discomfited; then
turning toward Sir Thomas, and looking and speaking as one submiss and
contrite, he thus appealed unto him:—
“Worshipful sir! were there any signs of venison on my mouth, Master
Silas could not for his life cry out upon it, nor help kissing it as
’twere a wench’s.”
Sir Thomas looked upon him with most lordly gravity and wisdom, and said
unto him, in a voice that might have come from the bench:
“Youth, thou speakest irreverently;” and then unto Master Silas: “Silas!
to the business on hand. Taste the fat upon yon boor’s table, which the
constable hath brought hither, good Master Silas! And declare upon oath,
being sworn in my presence, first, whether said fat do proceed of
venison; secondly, whether said venison be of buck or doe.”
Whereupon the reverend Sir Silas did go incontinently, and did bend
forward his head, shoulders, and body, and did severally taste four white
solid substances upon an oaken board; said board being about two yards
long, and one yard four inches wide,—found in, and brought thither from,
the tenement or messuage of Andrew Haggit, who hath absconded. Of these
four white solid substances, two were somewhat larger than a groat, and
thicker; one about the size of King Henry the Eighth’s shilling, when our
late sovereign lord of blessed memory was toward the lustiest; and the
other, that is to say the middlemost, did resemble in some sort, a
mushroom, not over fresh, turned upward on its stalk.
“And what sayest thou, Master Silas?” quoth the knight.
In reply whereunto Sir Silas thus averred:—
“Venison! o’ my conscience!
Buck! or burn me alive!
The three splashes in the circumference are verily and indeed venison;
buck, moreover,—and Charlecote buck, upon my oath!”
Then carefully tasting the protuberance in the centre, he spat it out,
crying,—
“_Pho_! _pho_! _villain_! _villain_!” and shaking his fist at the
culprit.
Whereat the said culprit smiled and winked, and said off-hand,—
“Save thy spittle, Silas! It would supply a gaudy mess to the hungriest
litter; but it would turn them from whelps into wolvets. ’T is pity to
throw the best of thee away. Nothing comes out of thy mouth that is not
savoury and solid, bating thy wit, thy sermons, and thy promises.”
It was my duty to write down the very words, irreverent as they are,
being so commanded. More of the like, it is to be feared, would have
ensued, but that Sir Thomas did check him, saying, shrewdly,—
“Young man! I perceive that if I do not stop thee in thy courses, thy
name, being involved in thy company’s, may one day or other reach across
the county; and folks may handle it and turn it about, as it deserveth,
from Coleshill to Nuneaton, from Bromwicham to Brownsover. And who
knoweth but that, years after thy death, the very house wherein thou wert
born may be pointed at, and commented on, by knots of people, gentle and
simple! What a shame for an honest man’s son! Thanks to me, who
consider of measures to prevent it! Posterity shall laud and glorify me
for plucking thee clean out of her head, and for picking up timely a
ticklish skittle, that might overthrow with it a power of others just as
light. I will rid the hundred of thee, with God’s blessing!—nay, the
whole shire. We will have none such in our county; we justices are
agreed upon it, and we will keep our word now and forevermore. Woe
betide any that resembles thee in any part of him!”
Whereunto Sir Silas added,—
“We will dog him, and worry him, and haunt him, and bedevil him; and if
ever he hear a comfortable word, it shall be in a language very different
from his own.”
“As different as thine is from a Christian’s,” said the youth.
“Boy! thou art slow of apprehension,” said Sir Thomas, with much gravity;
and taking up the cue, did rejoin,—
“Master Silas would impress upon thy ductile and tender mind the danger
of evil doing; that we, in other words that justice is resolved to follow
him up, even beyond his country, where he shall hear nothing better than
the Italian or the Spanish, or the black language, or the language of
Turk or Troubadour, or Tartar or Mongol. And, forsooth, for this gentle
and indirect reproof, a gentleman in priest’s orders is told by a
stripling that he lacketh Christianity! Who then shall give it?”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“Who, indeed? when the founder of the feast leaveth an invited guest so
empty! Yea, sir, the guest was invited, and the board was spread. The
fruits that lay upon it be there still, and fresh as ever; and the bread
of life in those capacious canisters is unconsumed and unbroken.”
SIR SILAS (_aside_).
“The knave maketh me hungry with his mischievous similitudes.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Thou hast aggravated thy offence, Wil Shakspeare! Irreverent caitiff!
is this a discourse for my chaplain and clerk? Can he or the worthy
scribe Ephraim (his worship was pleased to call me worthy) write down
such words as those, about litter and wolvets, for the perusal and
meditation of the grand jury? If the whole corporation of Stratford had
not unanimously given it against thee, still his tongue would catch thee,
as the evet catcheth a gnat. Know, sirrah, the reverend Sir Silas,
albeit ill appointed for riding, and not over-fond of it, goeth to every
house wherein is a venison feast for thirty miles round. Not a buck’s
hoof on any stable-door but it awakeneth his recollections like a red
letter.”
This wholesome reproof did bring the youth back again to his right
senses; and then said he, with contrition, and with a wisdom beyond his
years, and little to be expected from one who had spoken just before so
unadvisedly and rashly,—
“Well do I know it, your worship! And verily do I believe that a bone of
one being shovelled among the soil upon his coffin would forthwith
quicken {8a} him. Sooth to say, there is ne’er a buckhound in the county
but he treateth him as a godchild, patting him on the head, soothing his
velvety ear between thumb and forefinger, ejecting tick from tenement,
calling him ‘fine fellow,’ ‘noble lad,’ and giving him his blessing, as
one dearer to him than a king’s debt to a debtor, {8b} or a bastard to a
dad of eighty. This is the only kindness I ever heard of Master Silas
toward his fellow-creatures. Never hold me unjust, Sir Knight, to Master
Silas. Could I learn other good of him, I would freely say it; for we do
good by speaking it, and none is easier. Even bad men are not bad men
while they praise the just. Their first step backward is more
troublesome and wrenching to them than the first forward.”
“In God’s name, where did he gather all this?” whispered his worship to
the chaplain, by whose side I was sitting. “Why, he talks like a man of
forty-seven, or more!”
“I doubt his sincerity, sir!” replied the chaplain. “His words are
fairer now—”
“Devil choke him for them!” interjected he, with an undervoice.
“—and almost book-worthy; but out of place. What the scurvy cur yelped
against me, I forgive him as a Christian. Murrain upon such varlet
vermin! It is but of late years that dignities have come to be reviled.
The other parts of the Gospel were broken long before,—this was left us;
and now this likewise is to be kicked out of doors, amid the mutterings
of such mooncalves as him yonder.”
“Too true, Silas!” said the knight, sighing deeply. “Things are not as
they were in our glorious wars of York and Lancaster. The knaves were
thinned then,—two or three crops a year of that rank squitch-grass which
it has become the fashion of late to call the people. There was some
difference then between buff doublets and iron mail, and the rogues felt
it. Well-a-day! we must bear what God willeth, and never repine,
although it gives a man the heart-ache. We are bound in duty to keep
these things for the closet, and to tell God of them only when we call
upon his holy name, and have him quite by ourselves.”
Sir Silas looked discontented and impatient, and said, snappishly,—
“Cast we off here, or we shall be at fault. Start him, sir!—prithee,
start him.”
Again his worship, Sir Thomas, did look gravely and grandly, and taking a
scrap of paper out of the Holy Book then lying before him, did read
distinctly these words:—
“Providence hath sent Master Silas back hither, this morning, to confound
thee in thy guilt.”
Again, with all the courage and composure of an innocent man, and indeed
with more than what an innocent man ought to possess in the presence of a
magistrate, the youngster said, pointing toward Master Silas,—
“The first moment he ventureth to lift up his visage from the table, hath
Providence marked him miraculously. I have heard of black malice. How
many of our words have more in them than we think of! Give a countryman
a plough of silver, and he will plough with it all the season, and never
know its substance. ’T is thus with our daily speech. What riches lie
hidden in the vulgar tongue of the poorest and most ignorant! What
flowers of Paradise lie under our feet, with their beauties and parts
undistinguished and undiscerned, from having been daily trodden on! O,
sir, look you!—but let me cover my eyes! Look at his lips! Gracious
Heaven! they were not thus when he entered. They are blacker now than
Harry Tewe’s bull-bitch’s!”
Master Silas did lift up his eyes in astonishment and wrath; and his
worship, Sir Thomas, did open his wider and wider, and cried by fits and
starts:—
“Gramercy! true enough! nay, afore God, too true by half! I never saw
the like! Who would believe it? I wish I were fairly rid of this
examination,—my hands washed clean thereof! Another time,—anon! We have
our quarterly sessions; we are many together. At present I remand—”
And now, indeed, unless Sir Silas had taken his worship by the sleeve, he
would may-hap have remanded the lad. But Sir Silas, still holding the
sleeve and shaking it, said, hurriedly,—
“Let me entreat your worship to ponder. What black does the fellow talk
of? My blood and bile rose up against the rogue; but surely I did not
turn black in the face, or in the mouth, as the fellow calls it?”
Whether Master Silas had some suspicion and inkling of the cause or not,
he rubbed his right hand along his face and lips, and, looking upon it,
cried aloud,—
“Ho, ho! is it off? There is some upon my finger’s end, I find. Now I
have it,—ay, there it is. That large splash upon the centre of the table
is tallow, by my salvation! The profligates sat up until the candle
burned out, and the last of it ran through the socket upon the board. We
knew it before. I did convey into my mouth both fat and smut!”
“Many of your cloth and kidney do that, good Master Silas, and make no
wry faces about it,” quoth the youngster, with indiscreet merriment,
although short of laughter, as became him who had already stepped too far
and reached the mire.
To save paper and time, I shall now, for the most part, write only what
they all said, not saying that they said it, and just copying out in my
clearest hand what fell respectively from their mouths.
SIR SILAS.
“I did indeed spit it forth, and emunge my lips, as who should not?”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“Would it were so!”
SIR SILAS.
“_Would it were so_! in thy teeth, hypocrite!”
SIR THOMAS.
“And, truly, I likewise do incline to hope and credit it, as thus
paraphrased and expounded.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“Wait until this blessed day next year, sir, at the same hour. You shall
see it forth again at its due season; it would be no miracle if it
lasted. Spittle may cure sore eyes, but not blasted mouths and scald
consciences.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Why! who taught thee all this?”
Then turned he leisurely toward Sir Silas, and placing his hand
outspreaden upon the arm of the chaplain, said unto him in a low,
judicial, hollow voice,—
“Every word true and solemn! I have heard less wise saws from between
black covers.”
Sir Silas was indignant at this under-rating, as he appeared to think it,
of the church and its ministry, and answered impatiently, with Christian
freedom,—
“Your worship surely will not listen to this wild wizard in his
brothel-pulpit!”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“Do I live to hear Charlecote Hall called a brothel-pulpit? Alas, then,
I have lived too long!”
SIR SILAS.
“We will try to amend that for thee.”
William seemed not to hear him, loudly as he spake and pointedly unto the
youngster, who wiped his eyes, crying,—
“Commit me, sir! in mercy commit me! Master Ephraim! Oh, Master
Ephraim! A guiltless man may feel all the pangs of the guilty! Is it
you who are to make out the commitment? Dispatch! dispatch. I am
a-weary of my life. If I dared to lie, I would plead guilty.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Heyday! No wonder, Master Ephraim, thy entrails are moved and wamble.
Dost weep, lad? Nay, nay; thou bearest up bravely. Silas, I now find,
although the example come before me from humble life, that what my mother
said was true—’t was upon my father’s demise—‘In great grief there are
few tears.’”
Upon which did the youth, Willy Shakspeare, jog himself by the memory,
and repeat these short verses, not wide from the same purport:
“There are, alas, some depths of woe
Too vast for tears to overflow.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Let those who are sadly vexed in spirit mind that notion, whoever
indited it, and be men. I always was; but some little griefs have
pinched me woundily.”
Master Silas grew impatient, for he had ridden hard that morning, and had
no cushion upon his seat, as Sir Thomas had. I have seen in my time that
he who is seated on beech-wood hath very different thoughts and
moralities from him who is seated on goose-feathers under doe-skin. But
that is neither here nor there, albeit, an’ I die, as I must, my heirs,
Judith and her boy Elijah, may note it.
Master Silas, as above, looked sourishly, and cried aloud,—
“The witnesses! the witnesses! testimony! testimony! We shall now see
whose black goes deepest. There is a fork to be had that can hold the
slipperiest eel, and a finger that can strip the slimiest. I cry your
worship to the witnesses.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Ay, indeed, we are losing the day; it wastes toward noon, and nothing
done. Call the witnesses. How are they called by name? Give me the
paper.”
The paper being forthwith delivered into his worship’s hand by the
learned clerk, his worship did read aloud the name of Euseby Treen.
Whereupon did Euseby Treen come forth through the great hall-door which
was ajar, and answer most audibly,—
“Your worship!”
Straightway did Sir Thomas read aloud, in like form and manner, the name
of Joseph Carnaby; and in like manner as aforesaid did Joseph Carnaby
make answer and say,—
“Your worship!”
Lastly did Sir Thomas turn the light of his countenance on William
Shakspeare, saying,—
“Thou seest these good men deponents against thee, William Shakspeare.”
And then did Sir Thomas pause. And pending this pause did William
Shakspeare look steadfastly in the faces of both; and stroking down his
own with the hollow of his hand from the jaw-bone to the chin-point, said
unto his honour,—
“Faith! it would give me much pleasure, and the neighbourhood much
vantage, to see these two fellows good men. Joseph Carnaby and Euseby
Treen! Why! your worship! they know every hare’s form in
Luddington-field better than their own beds, and as well pretty nigh as
any wench’s in the parish.”
Then turned he with jocular scoff unto Joseph Carnaby, thus accosting
him, whom his shirt, being made stiffer than usual for the occasion,
rubbed and frayed,—
“Ay, Joseph! smoothen and soothe thy collar-piece again and again! Hark
ye! I know what smock that was knavishly cut from.”
Master Silas rose up in high choler, and said unto Sir Thomas,—
“Sir! do not listen to that lewd reviler; I wager ten groats I prove him
to be wrong in his scent. Joseph Carnaby is righteous and discreet.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“By daylight and before the parson. Bears and boars are tame creatures,
and discreet, in the sunshine and after dinner.”
EUSEBY TREEN.
“I do know his down-goings and uprisings.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“The man and his wife are one, saith holy Scripture.”
EUSEBY TREEN.
“A sober-paced and rigid man, if such there be. Few keep Lent like unto
him.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“I warrant him, both lent and stolen.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Peace and silence! Now, Joseph Carnaby, do thou depose on particulars.”
JOSEPH CARNABY.
“May it please your worship! I was returning from Hampton upon
Allhallowmas eve, between the hours of ten and eleven at night, in
company with Master Euseby Treen; and when we came to the bottom of
Mickle Meadow, we heard several men in discourse. I plucked Euseby Treen
by the doublet, and whispered in his ear, ‘Euseby! Euseby! let us slink
along in the shadow of the elms and willows.’”
EUSEBY TREEN.
“_Willows and elm-trees_ were the words.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“See, your worship! what discordances! They cannot agree in their own
story.”
SIR SILAS.
“The same thing, the same thing, in the main.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“By less differences than this estates have been lost, hearts broken, and
England, our country, filled with homeless, helpless, destitute orphans.
I protest against it.”
SIR SILAS.
“Protest, indeed! He talks as if he were a member of the House of Lords.
They alone can protest.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Your attorney may _object_, not _protest_, before the lord judge.
“Proceed you, Joseph Carnaby.”
JOSEPH CARNABY.
“In the shadow of the willows and elm-trees, then—”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“No hints, no conspiracies! Keep to your own story, man, and do not
borrow his.”
SIR SILAS.
“I overrule the objection. Nothing can be more futile and frivolous.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“So learned a magistrate as your worship will surely do me justice by
hearing me attentively. I am young; nevertheless, having more than one
year written in the office of an attorney, and having heard and listened
to many discourses and questions on law, I cannot but remember the heavy
fine inflicted on a gentleman of this county who committed a poor man to
prison for being in possession of a hare, it being proved that the hare
was in his possession, and not he in the hare’s.”
SIR SILAS.
“Synonymous term! synonymous term!”
SIR THOMAS.
“In what term sayest thou was it? I do not remember the case.”
SIR SILAS.
“Mere quibble mere equivocation! Jesuitical! Jesuitical!”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“It would be Jesuitical, Sir Silas, if it dragged the law by its
perversions to the side of oppression and cruelty. The order of Jesuits,
I fear, is as numerous as its tenets are lax and comprehensive. I am
sorry to see their frocks flounced with English serge.”
SIR SILAS.
“I don’t understand thee, viper!”
SIR THOMAS.
“Cease thou, Will Shakspeare! Know thy place. And do thou, Joseph
Carnaby, take up again the thread of thy testimony.”
JOSEPH CARNABY.
“We were still at some distance from the party, when on a sudden Euseby
hung an —” {21a}
SIR THOMAS.
“As well write _drew back_, Master Ephraim and Master Silas! Be
circumspecter in speech, Master Joseph Carnaby! I did not look for such
rude phrases from that starch-warehouse under thy chin. Continue, man!”
JOSEPH CARNABY.
“‘Euseby,’ said I in his ear, ‘what ails thee, Euseby?’ ‘I wag no
farther,’ quoth he. ‘What a number of names and voices!’”
SIR THOMAS.
“Dreadful gang! a number of names and voices! Had it been any other day
in the year but Allhallowmas eve! To steal a buck upon such a day!
Well! God may pardon even that. Go on, go on. But the laws of our
country must have their satisfaction and atonement. Were it upon any
other day in the calendar less holy, the buck were nothing, or next to
nothing, saving the law and our conscience and our good report. Yet we,
her Majesty’s justices, must stand in the gap, body and soul, against
evil-doers. Now do thou, in furtherance of this business, give thine aid
unto us, Joseph Carnaby!—remembering that mine eye from this
judgment-seat, and her Majesty’s bright and glorious one overlooking the
whole realm, and the broader of God above, are upon thee.”
Carnaby did quail a matter at these words about the judgment-seat and the
broad eye, aptly and gravely delivered by him moreover who hath to
administer truth and righteousness in our ancient and venerable laws, and
especially, at the present juncture, in those against park-breaking and
deer-stealing. But finally, nought discomfited, and putting his hand
valiantly atwixt hip and midriff, so that his elbow well-nigh touched the
taller pen in the ink-pot, he went on.
JOSEPH CARNABY.
“‘_In the shadow of the willows and elm-trees_,’ said he, ‘_and get
nearer_.’ We were still at some distance, maybe a score of furlongs,
from the party—”
SIR THOMAS.
“Thou hast said it already—all save the score of furlongs.”
“Hast room for them, Master Silas?”
“Yea,” quoth Master Silas, “and would make room for fifty, to let the
fellow swing at his ease.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Hast room, Master Ephraim?”
“’T is done, most worshipful!” said I. The learned knight did not
recollect that I could put fifty furlongs in a needle’s eye, give me pen
fine enough.
But far be it from me to vaunt of my penmanship, although there be those
who do malign it, even in my own township and parish; yet they never have
unperched me from my calling, and have had hard work to take an idle
wench or two from under me on Saturday nights.
I memorize thus much, not out of any malice or any soreness about me, but
that those of my kindred into whose hands it please God these papers do
fall hereafter, may bear up stoutly in such straits; and if they be good
at the cudgel, that they, looking first at their man, do give it him
heartily and unsparingly, keeping within law.
Sir Thomas, having overlooked what we had written, and meditated a while
thereupon, said unto Joseph,—
“It appeareth by thy testimony that there was a huge and desperate gang
of them afoot. Revengeful dogs! it is difficult to deal with them. The
laws forbid precipitancy and violence. A dozen or two may return and
harm me; not me, indeed, but my tenants and servants. I would fain act
with prudence, and like unto him who looketh abroad. He must tie his
shoe tightly who passeth through mire; he must step softly who steppeth
over stones; he must walk in the fear of the Lord (which, without a brag,
I do at this present feel upon me), who hopeth to reach the end of the
straightest road in safety.”
SIR SILAS.
“Tut, tut! your worship! Her Majesty’s deputy hath matchlocks and
halters at a knight’s disposal, or the world were topsyturvy indeed.”
SIR THOMAS.
“My mental ejaculations, and an influx of grace thereupon, have shaken
and washed from my brain all thy last words, good Joseph! Thy companion
here, Euseby Treen, said unto thee—ay—”
JOSEPH CARNABY.
“Said unto me, ‘What a number of names and voices! And there be but
three living men in all! And look again! Christ deliver us! all the
shadows save one go leftward; that one lieth right upon the river. It
seemeth a big, squat monster, shaking a little, as one ready to spring
upon its prey!’”
SIR THOMAS.
“A dead man in his last agonies, no doubt! Your deer-stealer doth boggle
at nothing. He hath alway the knife in doublet and the devil at elbow.
“I wot not of any keeper killed or missing. To lose one’s deer and
keeper too were overmuch.
“Do, in God’s merciful name, hand unto me a glass of sack, Master Silas!
I wax faintish at the big, squat man. He hath harmed not only me, but
mine. Furthermore, the examination is grown so long.”
Then was the wine delivered by Sir Silas into the hand of his worship,
who drank it off in a beaker of about half a pint,—but little to his
satisfaction, for he said shortly afterward,—
“Hast thou poured no water into the sack, good Master Silas? It seemeth
weaker and washier than ordinary, and affordeth small comfort unto the
breast and stomach.”
“Not I, truly, sir,” replied Master Silas “and the bottle is a fresh and
sound one. The cork reported on drawing, as the best diver doth on
sousing from Warwick bridge into Avon. A rare cork! as bright as the
glass bottle, and as smooth as the lips of any cow.”
SIR THOMAS.
“My mouth is out of taste this morning; or the same wine, mayhap, hath a
different force and flavor in the dining-room and among friends. But to
business—what more?”
“Euseby Treen, what may it be?” said I.
“I know,” quoth he, “but dare not breathe it.”
SIR THOMAS.
“I thought I had taken a glass of wine, verily. Attention to my duty as
a magistrate is paramount. I mind nothing else when that lies before me.
“Carnaby! I credit thy honesty, but doubt thy manhood. Why not breathe
it, with a vengeance?”
JOSEPH CARNABY.
“It was Euseby who dared not.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Stand still! Say nothing yet; mind my orders. Fair and softly! compose
thyself.”
They all stood silent for some time, and looked very composed, awaiting
the commands of the knight. His mind was clearly in such a state of
devotion that peradventure he might not have descended for a while longer
to his mundane duties, had not Master Silas told him that, under the
shadow of his wing, their courage had returned and they were quite
composed again.
“You may proceed,” said the knight.
JOSEPH CARNABY.
“Master Treen did take off his cap and wipe his forehead. I, for the
sake of comforting him in this his heaviness, placed my hand upon his
crown; and truly I might have taken it for a tuft of bents, the hair on
end, the skin immovable as God’s earth!”
Sir Thomas, hearing these words, lifted up his hands above his own head,
and in the loudest voice he had yet uttered did he cry,—
“Wonderful are thy ways in Israel, O Lord!”
So saying, the pious knight did strike his knee with the palm of his
right hand; and then gave he a sign, bowing his head and closing his
eyes, by which Master Carnaby did think he signified his pleasure that he
should go on deposing. And he went on thus:—
JOSEPH CARNABY.
“At this moment one of the accomplices cried, ‘Willy! Willy! prithee
stop! enough in all conscience! First thou divertedst us from our
undertaking with thy strange vagaries, thy Italian girls’ nursery sigh,
thy Pucks and pinchings, and thy Windsor whimsies. No kitten upon a bed
of marum ever played such antics. It was summer and winter, night and
day with us within the hour; and in such religion did we think and feel
it, we would have broken the man’s jaw who gainsaid it. We have slept
with thee under the oaks in the ancient forest of Arden, and we have
wakened from our sleep in the tempest far at sea. {29a} Now art thou for
frightening us again out of all the senses thou hadst given us, with
witches and women more murderous than they.’
“Then followed a deeper voice: ‘Stouter men and more resolute are few;
but thou, my lad, hast words too weighty for flesh and bones to bear up
against. And who knows but these creatures may pop amongst us at last,
as the wolf did, sure enough, upon him, the noisy rogue, who so long had
been crying _wolf_! and _wolf_!’”
SIR THOMAS.
“Well spoken, for two thieves; albeit I miss the meaning of the most
part. Did they prevail with the scapegrace and stop him?”
JOSEPH CARNABY.
“The last who had spoken did slap him on the shoulder, saying, ‘Jump into
the punt, lad, and across.’ Thereupon did Will Shakspeare jump into said
punt, and begin to sing a song about a mermaid.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“Sir! is this credible? I will be sworn I never saw one; and verily do
believe that scarcely one in a hundred years doth venture so far up the
Avon.”
SIR THOMAS.
“There is something in this. Thou mayest have sung about one,
nevertheless. Young poets take great liberties with all female kind; not
that mermaids are such very unlawful game for them, and there be songs
even about worse and staler fish. Mind ye that! Thou hast written
songs, and hast sung them, and lewd enough they be, God wot!”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“Pardon me, your worship! they were not mine then. Peradventure the song
about the mermaid may have been that ancient one which every boy in most
parishes has been singing for many years, and, perhaps, his father before
him; and somebody was singing it then, mayhap, to keep up his courage in
the night.”
SIR THOMAS.
“I never heard it.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“Nobody would dare to sing in the presence of your worship, unless
commanded,—not even the mermaid herself.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Canst thou sing it?”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“Verily, I can sing nothing.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Canst thou repeat it from memory?”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“It is so long since I have thought about it, that I may fail in the
attempt.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Try, however.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“‘The mermaid sat upon the rocks
All day long,
Admiring her beauty and combing her locks,
And singing a mermaid song.’”
SIR THOMAS.
“What was it? what was it? I thought as much. There thou standest, like
a woodpecker, chattering and chattering, breaking the bark with thy beak,
and leaving the grub where it was. This is enough to put a saint out of
patience.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“The wishes of your worship possess a mysterious influence,—I now
remember all.
“‘And hear the mermaid’s song you may,
As sure as sure can be,
If you will but follow the sun all day,
And souse with him into the sea.’”
SIR THOMAS.
“It must be an idle fellow who would take that trouble; besides, unless
he nicked the time he might miss the monster. There be many who are slow
to believe that the mermaid singeth.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“Ah sir! not only the mermaid singeth, but the merman sweareth, as
another old song will convince you.”
SIR THOMAS.
“I would fain be convinced of God’s wonders in the great deeps, and would
lean upon the weakest reed like unto thee to manifest his glory. Thou
mayest convince me.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
1.
“‘A wonderful story, my lasses and lads,
Peradventure you’ve heard from your grannams or dads,
Of a merman that came every night to woo
The spinster of spinsters, our Catherine Crewe.
2.
“‘But Catherine Crewe
Is now seventy-two,
And avers she hath half forgotten
The truth of the tale, when you ask her about it,
And says, as if fain to deny it or flout it,
“_Pooh_! _the merman is dead and rotten_.”
3.
“‘The merman came up as the mermen are wont,
To the top of the water, and then swam upon ’t;
And Catherine saw him with both her two eyes,
A lusty young merman full six feet in size.
4.
“‘And Catherine was frighten’d,
Her scalp-skin it tighten’d,
And her head it swam strangely, although on dry land;
And the merman made bold
Eftsoons to lay hold
(_This_ Catherine well recollects) of her hand.
5.
“‘But how could a merman, if ever so good,
Or if ever so clever, be well understood
By a simple young creature of our flesh and blood?
6.
“‘Some tell us the merman
Can only speak German,
In a voice between grunting and snoring;
But Catherine says he had learned in the wars
The language, persuasions, and oaths of our tars,
And that even his voice was not foreign.
7.
“‘Yet when she was asked how he managed to hide
The green fishy tail, coming out of the tide
For night after night above twenty,
“You troublesome creatures!” old Catherine replied,
“_In his pocket_; won’t that now content ye?”’”
SIR THOMAS.
“I have my doubts yet. I should have said unto her, seriously, ‘Kate!
Kate! I am not convinced.’ There may be witchcraft or sortilege in it.
I would have made it a star-chamber matter.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“It was one, sir.”
SIR THOMAS.
“And now I am reminded by this silly, childish song,—which, after all, is
not the true mermaid’s,—thou didst tell me, Silas, that the papers found
in the lad’s pocket were intended for poetry.”
SIR SILAS.
“I wish he had missed his aim, sir, in your park, as he hath missed it in
his poetry. The papers are not worth reading; they do not go against him
in the point at issue.”
SIR THOMAS.
“We must see that,—they being taken upon his person when apprehended.”
SIR SILAS.
“Let Ephraim read them, then; it behooveth not me, a Master of Arts, to
con a whelp’s whining.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Do thou read them aloud unto us, good Master Ephraim.”
Whereupon I took the papers which young Willy had not bestowed much pains
on; and they posed and puzzled me grievously, for they were blotted and
scrawled in many places, as if somebody had put him out. These likewise
I thought fit, after long consideration, to write better, and preserve,
great as the loss of time is when men of business take in hand such
unseemly matters. However, they are decenter than most, and not without
their moral; for example:—
“TO THE OWLET.
“Who, O thou sapient, saintly bird!
Thy shouted warnings ever heard
Unbleached by fear?
The blue-faced blubbering imp, who steals
Yon turnips, thinks thee at his heels,
Afar or near.
“The brawnier churl, who brags at times
To front and top the rankest crimes,—
To paunch a deer,
Quarter a priest, or squeeze a wench,—
Scuds from thee, clammy as a tench,
He knows not where.
“For this the righteous Lord of all
Consigns to thee the castle-wall,
When, many a year,
Closed in the chancel-vaults, are eyes
Rainy or sunny at the sighs
Of knight or peer.”
Sir Thomas, when I had ended, said unto me,
“No harm herein; but are they over?”
I replied, “Yea, sir!”
“I miss the _posy_,” quoth he; “there is usually a lump of sugar, or a
smack thereof at the bottom of the glass. They who are inexperienced in
poetry do write it as boys do their copies in the copy-book, without a
flourish at the finis. It is only the master who can do this
befittingly.”
I bowed unto his worship reverentially, thinking of a surety he meant me,
and returned my best thanks in set language. But his worship rebuffed
them, and told me graciously that he had an eye on another of very
different quality; that the plain sense of his discourse might do for me,
the subtler was certainly for himself. He added that in his younger days
he had heard from a person of great parts, and had since profited by it,
that ordinary poets are like adders,—the tail blunt and the body rough,
and the whole reptile cold-blooded and sluggish: “whereas we,” he
subjoined, “leap and caracole and curvet, and are as warm as velvet, and
as sleek as satin, and as perfumed as a Naples fan, in every part of us;
and the end of our poems is as pointed as a perch’s back-fin, and it
requires as much nicety to pick it up as a needle{38a} at nine groats the
hundred.”
Then turning toward the culprit, he said mildly unto him,—
“Now why canst thou not apply thyself unto study? Why canst thou not ask
advice of thy superiors in rank and wisdom? In a few years, under good
discipline, thou mightest rise from the owlet unto the peacock. I know
not what pleasant things might not come into the youthful head thereupon.
“He was the bird of Venus, {39b} goddess of beauty. He flew down (I
speak as a poet, and not in my quality of knight and Christian) with half
the stars of heaven upon his tail; and his long, blue neck doth verily
appear a dainty slice out of the solid sky.”
Sir Silas smote me with his elbow, and said in my ear,—
“He wanteth not this stuffing; he beats a pheasant out of the kitchen, to
my mind, take him only at the pheasant’s size, and don’t (upon your life)
overdo him.
“Never be cast down in spirit, nor take it too ‘grievously to heart, if
the colour be a suspicion of the pinkish,—no sign of rawness in that;
none whatever. It is as becoming to him as to the salmon; it is as
natural to your pea-chick in his best cookery, as it is to the finest
October morning,—moist underfoot, when partridge’s and puss’s and
renard’s scent lies sweetly.”
Willie Shakspeare, in the mean time, lifted up his hands above his ears
half a cubit, and taking breath again, said, audibly, although he willed
it to be said unto himself alone,—
“O that knights could deign to be our teachers! Methinks I should
briefly spring up into heaven, through the very chink out of which the
peacock took his neck.”
Master Silas, who like myself and the worshipful knight, did overhear
him, said angrily,—